Having graduated from North Side High School, Bob Schieffer got his degree from TCU (where the College of Communications now bears his name). Before Schieffer became the longest running moderator of any Sunday public affairs program, on CBS's Face the Nation, he got his start right here as a humble Star-Telegram reporter.
"I always wanted to be a reporter," Schieffer said. "When I went to cover Vietnam, I realized that the reporters there were really no better than I was - that is when I set my sights on a national post." The first broadcast job he landed was working for Channel 5 alongside Bobbie Wygant. "Compared to the Star-Telegram, it promised a whopping $20 more per week, and I needed the money," he recalled.
Then an upstart company named Metro Media hired Schieffer and relocated him to Washington, D.C. "That is how I wound up in Washington," he said. "And when Metro Media folded in the spring of 1969, I walked into CBS News without even having an appointment, got the job a few days later, and I have been there ever since."
Face the Nation turns 60 this coming November, and Schieffer has manned that desk for the past 20 years. While Schieffer celebrates 50 years in the profession (45 of those at CBS), his namesake at TCU, The Schieffer College of Communications, is nearing its 10thanniversary.
This year's Schieffer Symposium was held on April 9 in Ed Landreth Auditorium. He brought a few friends and colleagues to town with him. Among them were Bob Woodward, Peggy Noonan, Jane Pauley and Scott Pelley, host of the CBS Evening News, who actually hosted his Wednesday night broadcast live from the TCU campus.
The sold-out audience was entertained by a lively forum where it was announced that after 40 years with NBC, Jane Pauley will be joining CBS News Sunday Morning as a contributor.
While cable news outlets and social media have turned up the dial on sensationalism in recent years, Schieffer's demeanor, both on and off camera, is confident without being abrasive. "Heck, some reporters have made a career out of being antagonistic. Take Howard Cosell for example. But that has never been my style. I am an old beat reporter," he said. "So I learned early on that if you don't treat someone right when you interview them, you will have to go back and face them again the next day."
Storytelling may be a dying art, but Schieffer feels that it is still paramount to good journalism. "Telling the story is even more important in broadcast journalism than it is in print media, because our viewers have to catch it the first time. They don't have the luxury of going back and re-reading it," he said. "Our philosophy at CBS is always to move the story forward. We are like a public utility. When you turn on the faucet, you expect water to come out," Schieffer said. "We try to deliver accurate information that viewers can compare to the government's version of events, and then make up their own minds. People don't care about our personal ideology - they just want to know the facts about what happened." -Courtney Dabney
